Sunday, December 16, 2012

Late Autumn Report

Before the end of the world occurs
next week, I thought it prudent to record my experiences during the last two months
since I wrote.Who knows? Alien creatures might someday land on
this god-forsaken planet and want to learn about these fiendish apes, otherwise known as homines sapientes, nasty little creatures that succumbed to
the Mayan apocalypse because of their persistent Neolithic habits and left behind only blogs and videos for intergalactic travelers to piece together the prelapsarian past. Anyway, autumn is officially
coming to a close, and with its passing another lost opportunity to find a
modicum of solace regarding the essential questions of life.On a
positive note, though, the weather has been consistently temperate,
uncharacteristically so in this neck of the woods, inviting me to go running in
the woods whenever I can squeeze time between classes.My moderate physical fitness is one of the
necessary bulwarks against “black care.”I digress.Permit me to pick up
the story of this most fascinating primate, Der Viator, from the end of October
to the present.

Halloween was pretty fun: nursing a
bottle of Jack and watching a freakishly scary movie within the four barren walls of
my small rented room.What more could one
want? The day prior I entered one of my classrooms
dressed as the “Plague Doctor,” aided by heavy metal, black leather, and a strobe light; so I guess I celebrated Halloween in my own way,
whether or not the students in this epidemics course got something out of this spectacle. Self-amusement and pedagogy don't always work hand in glove.

Let’s move on to family, the other
bulwark.November is a month of
birthdays and of course Thanksgiving. Moments with the entire family are few and far between these days, and perhaps all the more enjoyable and precious when they occur. The photo at the top captures Jessi's birthday shindig at a pizza restaurant where Erika works as a waitress. I’ve
gone to a couple of Jessi’s swim meets and basketball games, as well as Monika’s
off-season indoor soccer matches. I've had the opportunity to go running with Jessi and Monika on separate occasions at my usual stomping grounds. Last
week I attended with my wife Jessi’s swim team awards banquet at the Holiday
Inn. My post-911 GI bill finally kicked in; I had transferred my benefits over to Erika to pay a portion of her tuition and other expenses.The paperwork for this was very difficult.If you sense me souring on the
military, dear reader, I’d say you have the gift of discernment; I’ll
get to this topic shortly.As mentioned in
a previous blog entry, Jessi, a high school senior, had an interview to get a congressional nomination
for the U.S. Naval Academy.She got the
nomination last week!Now we’re waiting
to see if she gets accepted.If not,
Jessi has applied to other colleges, two of which seem particularly promising, to
me anyway.I think my absences from the
family have perhaps taken a toll in terms of family cohesion.Then again, as my wife suggested, the
weekends end up being a bit more qualitative and focused than might be the case
if I were home all the time.Moreover,
as my daughters are now in their late teens and early twenties, the family dynamic would have probably changed in spite of my periodic absence.We just got back from Menards where we bought a Christmas tree.A kindly sixty-year-old man greeted us, helped
us pick one out, and netted it for us efficiently.I cautioned Monika and Jessi to beware of such
kindness in a strange man.Next thing
you know you’re hanging upside-down, naked, and disemboweled from the guy’s woodshed
ceiling and thinking What the f$ck? The girls decorated the tree once we got home. She's a bute, isn't she? We used to have a plastic nativity scene that goes at the bottom of the tree, but last year the dog chewed up Balthazar, the black dude among the three magi. We didn't want visitors to think we committed a wanton act of racial violence, so we got rid of the display altogether. Ironically, our black lab is named Balt, for Balthazar!

In November I watched Lincoln with my wife, the best movie I’ve
seen in recent memory.In Spielberg and
Daniel Day-Lewis’ hands, the viewing public perhaps sees the Great Emancipator
in a new light, a man devoted to his family, politically savvy, and with a wry
sense of humor.The film focused on
efforts to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, a shrewdway to make a film on such a monumental figure
in history.To be sure, there were
plenty of poignant moments both in terms of cinematography and dialogue.Tommy Lee Jones’ portrayal of Radical
Republican Thaddeus Stevens was second only to Day-Lewis’ Lincoln.General Grant plays a peripheral role, as the
film is not about the war front but about politics in Washington.Still, I like the brief Appomattox Court House scene,
though I don’t recall Lincoln actually being there and having a discussion with
Grant on the porch before Lee’s arrival. I bring up Grant because he’s one of my heroes
and I like Lincoln’s response to a cabinet official who is doubtful about the
progress of the war.“My trust in him
(Grant) is marrow deep,” explains the President.I love that.

On the academic front, I just
finished my first semester as a full-time instructor for Hexington College. I
enjoy the faculty, staff, and students most of all.I’m the faculty advisor for the International
Club.The students planned an
intercultural awareness day on campus (see photo); they set up a fun booth and dressed up to represent their various cultures. The club also had a potluck movie night a couple
of Fridays ago; it was fun.I’ve been selected to participate in a
program about bringing global issues into the classroom (or internationalizing the curriculum, to use the jargon).It involves a lot of reading, online
assignments, and a few days of face-to-face workshops and discussion at a university in January.I also became the advisor for a new campus club, the
Guitar Club, after a couple of students
badgered me this semester.I’ve been planning with colleagues a new
course for the spring; it will engage students with the
community and ultimately make meaningful connections between the university and real issues in the local area.The work has been a chore and time is running out,
but most of the people in the group are great and I love being a part of something so significant and potentially transformational! I'm probably the least experienced in this group, but I enjoy the challenge. Lastly, I had the good fortune of co-teaching another course this past semester with two faculty members who know their stuff. I learned a lot.

Let me briefly touch upon military
matters. I’m nearly sixteen months into my command time, and counting.Other company commanders in the battalion are
bailing after eighteen months, which I understand is an option. (Normally a command
position lasts two years, sometimes three.) Some of them
have conceded that I have the toughest job: a headquarters detachment commander.This kind of command poses particular
problems, but I won’t get into them here.
I'll stick it out for the full tenure, as I want to leave the unit with certain objectives having been accomplished; moreover, I'm not ready to make a change until at least the summer. My tentative plan is to jump into the National Guard in the state where I currently teach. I've had to give the boot to a few soldiers, as they haven't complied with Army standards for years. It wasn't pretty. They whined, cried, yelled, stabbed the air with their fingers, cajoled, questioned my leadership, threw the blame on others, and otherwise refused to see the writing on the wall. It's as if they were demon-possessed victims and I was the exorcist. The more I confronted them with the truth, the more they hissed and howled. At the top of November I had a four-day battle drill weekend at “Fort Elroy,” involving SRP (Soldier Readiness Processing), weapons qualification, and the physical
fitness test.I had to make arrangements
for one of my classes, as I had to leave early on a Thursday.A colleague generously helped me out by showing a documentary for my class and
taking attendance in my absence.I don’t
like missing class, and this was the only time. I told myself I’d never let my military duties interfere
with my civilian job.As it turns out, I’m
on military orders for this upcoming week, which is finals week at
Hexington.But that’s okay, because I’m not
giving a final and I need this time with my first sergeant to get my military
house in order.Music is a last defense against a “sea
of troubles.”Would that I had more time
for it, but I no longer have much of a creative impulse anyway.Apart from those occasions when I bring the
guitar into the classroom, and notwithstanding the aforementioned guitar club, I’ve
spent little time playing music, though listening
in my car during long drives provides some panacea for my bemuddled soul.Yet I managed to write a song a couple of
months ago, something I haven’t done in ages.Also, earlier this week I tickled the ivories on a grand piano
tucked away in a basement hallway. Yesterday Monika and I sang songs together
at the top of our lungs and she accompanied my guitar with the xylophone on a
cover of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know.”Fun.

Well, this concludes my little report. Let me now turn to you, the reader, and express my thanks for your support these past three years. We’ve laughed together, we’ve cried together. So often I've wished I could just reach through this laptop screen and touch you (not sexually). It's like we have some kind of a bond, no? Well, maybe not. Anyway, I don’t know who you are, but I love you (not literally). If we don't make it past December 21, I hope to see you on the other side. And to any future alien invaders reading this: First off, how did you decipher our language? Second, welcome to a world that was once ours but is now a smoldering ash heap of charred civilizations and extinguished dreams. Enjoy (not really).